Stardust
by Omnicat
Summary: Li's daemon is... maybe a little TOO appropriate. / daemon/His Dark Materials AU set during episode 23


"I thought only hamsters and squirrels could do that," Misaki said, staring at Li's daemon in fascination.

Their food had just been brought to their table, and the grill was warming up. Norihide was already gnawing on his complementary bone, and Li's little mouse had dropped herself face-first into the bowl of sunflower seeds provided for her. She was on a fast track to stuffing the entire contents of the bowl into her cheeks.

Li's shoulders hitched up a little as they shook with self-deprecating laughter. "I guess they're more known for it, but there are a few species of mice with pouches too. Shun is a spiny pocket mouse."

"Ah," Misaki said, though that meant nothing to her. "Norihide is an akita."

"I should think even a Han knows a purebred akita when he sees one," Norihide said around his bone.

Mortified, Misaki turned to her daemon to shush him – only to find him winking at Li. Li looked away, blushing, and Misaki gave Norihide the evil eye. The dog, of course, was unrepentant, and went on chewing his bone completely unperturbed.

This was what she got for having a personal life for once, she guessed.

"Hey, take it easy," Li said quietly. He stroked Shun's side with the back of his pointer finger. "We've got all night, no need to rush."

But the fluffy-tailed rodent shook her head with a heated little sound, and clambered up his arm, across his shoulders, and into the front pocket of his shirt. He glanced down and sighed.

"Oh. I should've known."

When his daemon emerged again moments later and headed back to her bowl, her cheeks were empty. But not for long.

Misaki stifled a laugh.

"Did she settle young?" she asked on impulse.

Li gave her an odd look. "How so?"

_Because the first time we met I could've sworn she was a kangaroo mouse instead of this spiky whatever, and I am rarely ever wrong about these things,_ Misaki didn't say.

Firstly, because there were few things more rude than prying into the business of a grown man or woman whose daemon may not have settled yet. In individuals of otherwise sound mind – which Li Sheng _did_ seem to be – it was never a sign of anything happy.

Secondly, because a big part of her – about Norihide's size, give or take – just didn't want to admit how suspicious she was of this nice, handsome young man she could see herself becoming friends with.

Dolls and Contractors lost their daemons; nobody knew how, or why, or where the daemons went, because by all scientific rights, they should still be there. Great and terrible strides had been made since the appearance of the Gates in the dubiously legal and utterly immoral field of artificially attracting Dust to various non-sentient creatures and objects. A person without a daemon stood out like a horrifically mangled, bloody thumb, so to put Dolls and Contractors to use in public, they were equipped with fake daemons: ordinary animals implanted with Gate-based, Dust-attracting artificial intelligence. Nearly indistinguishable from the real deal, but due to the trauma inflicted to the animal's brain, frail and short-lived.

Maybe Misaki simply remembered wrong because kangaroo mice were the only non-standard types of mice she knew of.

Maybe Li was one of those unlucky souls who didn't settle for decades.

Or maybe Li really was BK-201 in cognito, his false kangaroo mouse had died at some point after Alice's party, and because his employers hadn't expected him to run into anyone who had seen him with the old decoy again and most people weren't as observant as Misaki anyway, they had replaced the old 'Shun' with a different kind of mouse.

Because come _on_ now. A guy like Li, with a timid little mouse daemon that _also_ happened to be built for literally stuffing its face? Nobody was _that_ transparent. But there was no way of knowing for sure without either a warrant and a laboratory, or a confession.

Misaki didn't have the former, and wasn't sure she really wanted the latter.

Well, there _was_ a third option, she supposed. Snatch up that innocuous little mouse while he wasn't looking, and see if he noticed. But a wilful violation like that was a one-way ticket to either a lawsuit and the permanent loss of his trust, or a public showdown with one of the most notorious killers the Gates had ever produced.

...which left Misaki with a conversation starter she had no idea how to follow up on, oh god, think fast, Kirihara, think fast!

"Oh, no reason really, just, uh, something my grandmother told me once," she stammered. "That people with unassuming daemons settle young because they know from an early age that they don't have to have a big, flashy, impressive daemon to understand their own worth."

"Oh." He gave her a carefully blank look. "That... uh... was nice of her."

And now she'd insulted him by calling his daemon underwhelming. Great.

Shun had paused her cheek-stuffing – or no, wait, she was just out of sunflower seeds – and was now inspecting all the other bowls on the table with a palpable air of determination and 'I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that'. Li followed her with his eyes without really seeming to see her.

"God, I'm sorry, I didn't mean –" Misaki started, but Li shook his head and gave her a crooked little smile.

"It's fine, I understand. I know people don't think much of her sometimes, but I've never been ashamed of what she is. She didn't settle that young," he said. "We were fourteen. Pretty average age, in my experience."

"...yeah," Misaki said, returning the smile. But she averted her gaze nonetheless. She wasn't sure whether or not to be disappointed. "We were fourteen too."

"No, wait, watch out!" Li exclaimed without warning – just as Shun's tiny but wriggly weight caused the bowl of sauce to topple.

Misaki clapped a hand over her mouth. Norihide shot upright and put his front paws on the table to see what all the commotion was about.

Covered in sauce from head to toe, Shun wiped her little head and her bulging cheeks with her front paws and looked up sheepishly. "Only one bowl of seeds then, huh?"

Li hid his face in his hands. Misaki burst out laughing.


End file.
